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SirPhoebos posted:From what I've gathered there were two ways to do oWoD: This is why I bounced so hard off Requiem to start with -- I always played Masquerade as 'superheroes with fangs and drat the people who tell me that's bad' and as far as I can tell Requiem was written to poo poo comprehensively on anyone who tried that. But then I learned to engage with Requiem on its own terms, and now I'm quite fond of it.
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Dec 21, 2016 00:08
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potatocubed posted:This is why I bounced so hard off Requiem to start with -- I always played Masquerade as 'superheroes with fangs and drat the people who tell me that's bad' and as far as I can tell Requiem was written to poo poo comprehensively on anyone who tried that. You can also still play the hell out Requiem as superheroes with fangs, for what it's worth. Later books even give you some good poo poo for it, like a bunch of the bloodlines, or the Holy Engineers. ...well, in the Holy Engineers' case you better be okay with being The Question: Crazy Dracula Edition.
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Dec 21, 2016 00:18
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Just, like, it'll be the kind of superheroes from the 2000-2010 era, where the consequences of violence and the possibility of losing connection with normal people will be a Big Deal.
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Dec 21, 2016 00:23
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From what I've heard about Deviant: The Renegades seems like it will run superheroes well, if you like the hulk and other heroes that have to be careful about destroying yourself.
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Dec 21, 2016 00:29
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Desiden posted:My personal favorite was someone in a one shot I was playing in who did the absurd "get ahroun with the short fuse flaw, 10 rage, and starting willpower" who botched charging in on a fomori (back in the terrible 1s subtract days), dropped his klaive, botched his frenzy resistance check again due to 1s, then proceeded to fail or botch all but one attack roll against whoever was nearest throughout the combat. That one successful hit? no damage on the damage roll. It would be hilarious if one of the other characters said at him, "Stop spazzing out, dude" even after all of that. JesterOfAmerica posted:From what I've heard about Deviant: The Renegades seems like it will run superheroes well, if you like the hulk and other heroes that have to be careful about destroying yourself. The what now? Is this fan-made or an upcoming WW product?
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Dec 21, 2016 01:20
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Young Freud posted:It would be hilarious if one of the other characters said at him, "Stop spazzing out, dude" even after all of that. Upcoming Onyx Path project.
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Dec 21, 2016 01:25
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New Onyx Path, Dave Brookshaw is the developer if that eases/raises concerns.
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Dec 21, 2016 02:00
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Vampire: the Requiem, 2nd Edition We've discussed what the Predatory Aura is in fluff terms. How's it work mechanically? Well, first: if a vampire perceives a vampire with any of your senses, they know they're a vampire. This is not symmetrical - if the other vampire can't sense you, they have no idea what you are, or that you're even there. This is both mystical and physical - vampires can smell the faint scent of victims' blood on each other, can see the shallow breath, etc. Beyond this, a vampire can lash out with their aura. Against a vampire, this escalates things to either a fight or someone running. Against a mortal, it's an assertion of power. Against a vampire it costs 1 WP. Against a mortal, it's free. Lashing out takes one of three forms at your whim. The Monstrous Beast draws on the Beast's destructive nature, its instinct to kill and crush. It forces the victim's survival instincts to the fore and applies the Bestial condition, which weakens the target's defense and ability to resist frenzy and boosts others' attempts to make you escape or perform aggressive actions. The Seductive Beast draws on the Beast's ability to tempt others, its nature as an escape from reality. It draws the need for instant gratification out and applies the Wanton Condition, reducing resistance to social and mental effects and attempts to resist temptation. The final type is the Competitive Beast, drawing on the Beast's need to dominate others. It draws on the instinct to dominate and control, placing the Competitive condition, which reduces your rolls when you don't spend Willpower while competing with another and makes it easier to get you to compete. When hit with the Aura, no matter what it is, the victim can choose fight or flight. Fight costs Willpower if you're not a vampire or are a weaker vampire, but lets you try to resist. If you're a vampire, you can even try to turn the aura back on them. Flight does not resist - you take the condition and try to get the gently caress away. Now, how are vampires made? Step 1: Drain someone of blood. Step 2: Put some of your own blood in them. Bam. Done. Of course, it must be an act of will - you can't Embrace a mortal accidentally. (Mostly.) Any attempt to make the Embrace work costs a dot of Humanity as the price for raising them. That isn't the only method, though - it's possible to give a posthumous Embrace. This must be done within a week of the victim's death, and you have to put your blood in them somehow. If you do this on purpose, it still costs Humanity...but it's possible, if rare, that this happens by accident. Most vampires look down on the posthumous Embrace and those who are made from it, though some of Clan Mekhet practice it for spiritual reasons. It is also possible for some victims of vampire attack to spontaneously be Embraced. Ghouls and victims of violent feeding occasionally rise for no clear reason. They are known as revenants, and they're not true vampires - not yet. Someone can Embrace them properly, raising them up to full vampire status, for a Humanity dot. Until then, they have no clan (and so no clan weakness), cannot store much Vitae, can't learn many Disciplines, cannot make ghouls or blood bonds, and are very good at tracking the vampire that infected them. They also use all of their Vitae to rise each night, awakening starving no matter how much they ate. Most revenants die quickly. It should be noted that feeding comes in two varieties. Subtle feeding via the Kiss won't usually make revenants. Aggressive and violent feeding can do it more often. Aggressive feeding uses a vampire's fangs as a weapon in combat, draining their blood as part of an attack. Violent feeding inflicts the Scarred condition, making it harder for them to resist fearand intimidation, as well as making them more angry and paranoid. Subtle feeding does not hurt, and is in fact extremely pleasurable, as noted in prior posts. This applies the Swooning condition, making it harder for your victim to harm you and easier for you to manipulate them. Vitae, it should be noted, is not blood. Not in the direct sense. A vampire does not actually lose physical blood when using Vitae. Rather, Vitae is the energy vampires gain from drinking blood. Human blood is best eaten from a living vein. Every human contains Vitae equal to their lethal Health Levels, and basically you deal 1L per Vitae. Taking too much from them weakens them and makes it harder for them to resist disease and wounds. Blood kept outside the body for more than a few minutes is much less tasty, and is worthless if it's more than a night old. You must consume (Blood Potency/2) pints of cold blood to get 1 Vitae. Refrigerated blood bags are absolutely useless, as is any other form of technologically preserved blood. Animal blood is of limited use, and only to young Kindred, providing Vitae based on the animal's size. Larger animals can give more. At the start of most sessions, you are going to roll to see how much Vitae you have. It's 1d10+(Feeding Ground merit dots), or your maximum capacity, whichever is less. The game also offers two options for feeding scenes if you want to go hunt for more blood. One method uses dice, the other doesn't. For the dice version, you roll whatever pool the GM deems appropriate to your hunting activity. Succeed and you can drain however many victims you were hunting for. Usually one. On an exceptional success, though, the GM tells you a little about your victim, and you can get a Beast by asking that they become involved in the plot in a later scene. (If you killed them, maybe the cops get involved.) The diceless version is intended to produce intimate and dramatic scenes. You tell the GM what kind of person you're hunting for. The ST then gives you a situation and some action to go with it - what the mark is doing, some details about them. You go back and forth, one action or exchange at a time - and unlike normal play, whoever's narrating can dictate the response of both parties. At any time, the other players can raise their hands, and the narrator can call on them to step in with a bit part in the scene. The hunting PC can, at any time, interject and have their character contradict the current action, but must do so in a way that involves the character's Mask or Dirge. Each time they do, the ST marks down a check. The PC can also interject at any time to frenzy. This does not add a check. You go to the logical conclusion of the scene. At the end, you count up the checks and roll for detachment at Humanity (6-check marks). You also add a check mark for any actions that would have called for a detachment check during the scene. Next time: Sleep, bloodlines and the Blood.
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Dec 21, 2016 02:18
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JesterOfAmerica posted:From what I've heard about Deviant: The Renegades seems like it will run superheroes well, if you like the hulk and other heroes that have to be careful about destroying yourself. Or going full anime! (Specifically old violent OVAs) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SujWTm9D0H8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5f1kpFHCtWc
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Dec 21, 2016 06:37
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Vampire: the Requiem, 2nd Edition At sunrise, vampires are naturally drawn to sleep. Indeed, they can barely resist it unless they're at risk of death by sunlight. It takes a roll, and even if they manage it, they get the Lethargic condition to penalize their actions. Vampires are also heavy sleepers, woken only by direct threats like fire, sunlight or the building collapsing on them. Waking is hard and fast, and it's not pleasant, in those cases. You have to make a Humanity check, and get to remain active for (successes) turns. Once that's over, you have to roll again or fall asleep, though you can stay awake indefinitely if you get (5+Blood Potency) successes total over all your rolls. However, any time a vampire awakens, it costs 1 Vitae. Normal waking happens shortly after sunset, and is painful, like a reverse heart attack. Vampires are not divided just by clan, but also within those clans, by bloodlines. Bloodlines essentially are a specialized clan variant, which gains a greater curse, but also greater access to Disciplines. You can join your sire's bloodline at BP 1, or the bloodline of any vampire you share a blood tie with at BP 2. At BP 4, you can join the line of any vampire of your clan. Whoever inducts you into a bloodline is your Avus and must feed you at least one point of their Vitae - with all the risks it brings. At BP 6, you can invent your own bloodline, and all bloodlines were born that way. You may never be part of more than one bloodline, and you can never leave a bloodline once you join. Every bloodline gives you a fourth "in-clan" Discipline, and this can be one unique to the bloodline, which no other vampires can learn, even by diablerie. Of course, as noted, every bloodline has an additional bane on top of their clan bane - and often it's rather worse than a clan bane. Vitae, as we've noted before, is not literal blod. It doesn't get drained when you bleed while, say, under the Blush of Life. However, the energy of Vitae can be placed in your blood by use of certain Disciplines, the act of making a blood bond or the Embrace. Vampires in their normal state do not bleed when cut, as the Vitae prevents it. However, loss of a limb can cause limited loss of Vitae, though this is rare. Blood that bears Vitae is slightly darker than normal and is almost syrupy. It smells like blood, but also sweet in a subtle way. The Vitae of related vampires calls out to each other via mystical sympathy. It allows these vampires to sense each other and feel, in a limited sense, each others' emotions - frenzies, great joys, the pain of violence, the shame of def eat. It's rarely clear, instead coming in the form of dreams, symbols and hallucinations, except in the case of the strongest ties, which are generally between sire and childe. This is the once-removed tie. At this level, you get the greatest bonus to actively seek out the other vampire, and can do so from anywhere in the world. The twice-removed tie is for siblings, grandchilder and grandsires. It gives a nice bonus to sympathy checks, and can be used anywhere on the same continent as the other vampire. Thrice-removed tie is your cousins, your sire's siblings, and your great-grandsires or great-grandchilder. It gives a smal lbonus and can work anywhere in the same city as the other vampire. Four times removed is any clanmate. No bonus, but you can use it anywhere within a mile of the other vampire. Sympathy automatically is felt whenever a related vampire enters torpor or dies, though often in symbolic terms. You can also engage sympathy to send messages about your state of being to thise relativesd only once or twice removed, though it costs Willpower and a Blood Potency check. At the GM's whim, any strong emotion can trigger sympathy, but this is more of a dramatic device. The death of a relative may cause frenzy. You may also spend Willpower and roll Wits+Blood Potency to try and detect a specific vampire, assuming they're in range. This can prove quite handy if you want to track them down - but of course, it also lets them do the same to you. You can also sense if the relative has entered torpor or died, but won't know which without an exceptional success. Drinking the Vitae of other vampires is dangerous. It's highly addictive, both to mortals and vampires. This is extremely useful, though - even without the blood bond, Vitae is a valuable bargaining chip. Addiction is a nasty, nasty thing. Vitae addiction feels rather like addiction to a drug, and it's always there, in the back of your mind. You can't let it go. Some addicts even resort to attacking other vampires or even diablerie to get their fix. Any time you consume vampiric Vitae, you have to make a check to avoid addiction, with a penalty based on how much you've consumed. Fail, and you've got a persistent Addicted condition. To make it worse? Vitae also create the Vinculum, the blood bond - a one-sided, powerful emotional tie to the vampire you drink from. Many intentionally expose humans to it as part of, say, the ghoul-making process, but vampires are no less vulnerable to it. Many sires bind their childer, and Princes often impose the Vinculum asp unishment for a crime. Every city, covenant and vampire has a different view on the bond. Bound characters are known as thralls, and those they are bound to are regnants. Any time you drink one or more points of Vitae, it creates or advances a blood bond, up to the third (and final) stage. Vampires can resist the bond with Willpower and a Blood Potency roll, but even that's not easy. Mortals have no defense. The first stage of the blood bond is like having a crush. It's not love, unless you're some inexperienced teenager...but it does make you want your regnant, want to be close to them and get their approval. It gives the regnant a minor bonus to social rolls or Discipline usage against you, and makes harming them a breaking point. The second stage of the bond is easy to confuse for love. It makes you feel tense when thinking about the regnant, makes you want to be near them all the time. The bonus your regnant gets against you is higher, and the breaking point is harder. The third stage of the bond is obsession and desire on an extreme level, to the point that you'd sabotage other relationships just for fear that they might intrude. It's total infatuation, and it makes the regnant's bonus quite largeand your breaking point quite nasty if you harm them. Worse - any Disciplines they use on you last longer than normal. However, any third-stage blood bond will break any other bonds you have, and prevents new ones from forming. Blood bonds last one year from the most recent drink of the regnant's Vitae. No matter how strong the bond is, it will fade in that time. It's not a strict limit in character - it can vary by a few weeks - but it's always around a year. Ghouls are what happens when a mortal drinks Kindred blood and the vampire decides to give them a taste of power. Ghouls have limited access to certain vampiric traits - they don't age, and they can spend Vitae to heal or improve their physical abilities. They can even learn Disciplines. However, this all goes away if the ghoul goes a month without Vitae. The gifts are lost, as if they never were. It's a very powerful tool for vampires to use in controlling mortals and, thus, maintaining their Masquerades. Ghouls are loyal and effective allies, able to work during the day. Most cities see the use of ghouls as a necessary one, though some Princes outlaw ghouls. Most cities treat killing or permanently harming a ghoul to be identical to attacking a vampire's safe haven. Vampires often guard their ghouls jealously, and even an abusive master will be defensive of them - they're investments of Vitae, after all. At least one Carthian faction, the Anti-Obstructionist Army, feel that interfering in mortal life is wrong and so vampires that maintain large ghoul stables must die. The Carthians as a whole disavow this but do nothing to get rid of the Army. Ghoul rules are at the end of the book, but to make one, you spend 1 Willpower and 1 Vitae. Further feeding only costs Vitae. Next time: Why being a vampire sucks
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Dec 21, 2016 22:36
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Vampire: the Requiem, 2nd Edition A note before we head into weaknesses. Diablerie! To diablerize a vampire, you have to drink them dry. After that, you drink further. Each Vitae that would be taken instead is 1L damage to them. You keep going until they're full up on Agg damage. Then you spend a Willpower and roll Strength+Resolve. You can keep doing this at 1 WP per roll until you get the target's BP in successes. Then you're done, you've done it. If you give up or fail, you're done and you can't try again. Anyway, once you do it, you get 1 XP - that's XP, not Beat - per dot of BP the target had, which you can use only to purchase Blood Potency (or save up for a BP purchase later). You also get a free dot in the highest of the victim's Disciplines that you don't already have. If you had all their Disciplines at equal or higher level, you get one of their Skill dots instead. Diablerie is always a breaking point no matter how low your Humanity is. It feels wrong, no matter who you are. It feels dirty. And after, you can hear the victim's voice in your mind at times, urging you towards death as penance. You gain the Tainted condition - basically, once per session, your victim can come back within your soul and penalize one of your actions or buff an enemy due to their subtle manipulation of your psyche. Oh, and like Vitae, diablerie is addictive. The sense of power you get afterwards is a huge rush. No matter what, once you do it, you are addicted, and resisting the opportunity to perform diablerie later is hard. Now, weaknesses. All kindred suffer from three weaknesses universally. First is the 'Pain of Purity' - sunlight. It represents truth, visibility and honesty to creatures that exist in darkness and lies. It burns the flesh of vampires. The Lance claim this is God's judgment, particularly as more potent and monstrous vampires burn hotter and faster. Qucik damage looks like a burn, while slower damage resembles decay. Your Humanity determines how much damage you take from sunlight, while Blood Potency determines how often. At minimum, Humanity 7-10, you take 1L per period, while a Humanity 0 draugr would be taking 5A per period. BP 0 is no damage, but at BP 1-2, it's per ten minutes, and BP 10, it's five times each turn. You can lower your effective Blood Potency by one if you cover yourself such that only your eyes are uncovered. Anything else is not enough. Second is the 'Pain of Knowledge' - fire. Fire represents human dominance over the natural world, and it is a very human tool. It destroys vampiric flesh easily. The Circle of the Crone believes this is a lesson: humanity is where you came from, and you can never return to it. Most vampires avoid fire at all costs. Fire deals Agg damage to vampires per turn of exposure - no roll, just, if you're hit by a fire bigger than a candle, you're burning and taking agg, while mortals would take only lethal. The third weakness is the stake to the heart; we'll discuss that more when we talk about torpor. Each clan also provides a Bane, a weakness that affects only that clan. Clan Banes do not affect newly turned vampires until they drop to Humanity 6. At that point, the bane sets in - and even if you raise Humanity again, it never goes away. The Daeva suffer the Wanton Curse. They not only feed on mortals but are compelled by them. If they drink from a mortal once, that's fine. No harm, no foul. But a second drink from the same source (and any further drinks) requires a Humanity roll to avoid gaining the Dependent condition towards the mortal - and that can only go away when the mortal dies. Essentially, they act as if they have a second stage blood bond towards the mortal. As a result, Daeva tend to either focus on drinking only once from many mortals or developing deep relationships with a small 'harem' of feeding targets. Gangrel, whose Beast is so close to the surface, suffer the Feral Curse. They are excellent at working with the Beast within...but they're absolute pants at fighting against it. Their dicepool to resist frenzy can never be higher than their Humanity dots - ever. This does not affect dicepools for riding the wave, however. Mekhet are of the shadows and secrecy, and so they suffer the Tenebrous Curse. When a Mekhet first reaches Humanity 6, they take a single bane, not tied to any breaking point, which counts towards the three banes any vampire can have. (More on banes later.) Further, Mekhet treat their Humanity one dot lower for all Humanity-based banes - including sunlight and torpor. Nosferatu are monstrous, disgusting, fearsome creatures. Some are inhumanly ugly, some have a gaze that makes others feel violated. All Nosferatu have something that makes it hard for them to deal with humans. Nosferatu treat their Humanity as two dots lower for the purposes of social penalties from low Humanity, and any failures on Presence or Manipulation rolls are dramatic failures. Neither of those penalties, however, apply to interactions with Touchstones or vampires. The Ventrue are arrogant, confident and often treat others as objects. They suffer the Aloof Curse. Their first Touchstone is tied to their seventh Humanity dot - the first time they lose Humanity, they also lose the benefits of the Touchstone. If they buy Touchstones with merit dots, they can fill the sixth through second dots. A Humanity 1 Ventrue cannot have a Touchstone until they raise their Humanity. We've mentioned frenzy. What is frenzy? Well, sometimes, the Beast grows impatient with your human whining. When you face danger, hunger or threats, the Beast can reach up and goad you into an extreme response - usually a murderous frenzy. All frenzy, no matter the source, has one goal: end the problem by any means necessary. You can temporarily hold the Beast back, but eventually you have to face it - fight, feed or flee. While frenzying, a vampire can still lash out with the predatory aura, however. Resisting the Beast is a Resolve+Composure roll. Dramatic failure means you're frenzying and it won't end until you reach a breaking point. Once the Beast gets what it wants, it picks a new target. Failure, well, you get frenzy. Success means you instead get tyhe Tempted condition, which maes it harder to resist future frenzy until you either frenzy or have some significant interaction with a Touchstone. You cannot spend Willpower on the frenzy resistance roll. Rather, spending a point of Willpower automatically delays the roll for a turn and lets you control your actions, and provides a bonus to the roll equal to the turns you spent putting off the frenzy this way. The fact that frenzy can sometimes be caused by insults is part of why vampires are so cautiously, cattily polite to each other most of the time. When a vampire frenzies, you determine what the Beast wants. Escape, punishing the person that insulted the vampire, food. The frenzy typically ends when it gets what it wants, when a magic power says it does, or when you enter torpor. A Touchstone can talk a vampire down from frenzy with extended social rolls, but it ain't easy and the vampire's going to be causing problems the whole time. While in frenzy, a vampire is stronger, faster, tougher. Their Blood Potency is added to any and all physical rolls or resistances, though not the Health track. They ignore wound penalties. They can grab and bite as a single action rather than needing to establish a grapple, then bite. Any attempt by anyone but a Touchstone to make you act contrary to the Beast's desire via Social actions fails automatically, as does any attempt to do so by magic, though it is possible to distract the Beast to a similar target to the one it's already seeking. A frenzied vampire will do anything and everything they can to do what the Beast wants, but the Beast is not stupid. It will do anything a starving, enraged or terrified predator might, and will use the predatory aura to its best ability to help it. To do anything contrary to the agenda of the Beast costs 1 Willpower. Also, the first to frenzy in a scene gets the biggest benefits - any vampires that frenzy afterwards only get half their Blood Potency bonus. It is, however, possible to control the frenzy. This is known as riding the wave. You spend Willpower and make the normal resistance roll, no bonuses. If you succeed, you can act as you wanted. You keep doing this until you fail, run out of Willpower or get five successes. Any failure, however, is a dramatic one. Once you get up to five successes, you're riding the wave. You get all the benefits of frenzy...but you choose the Beast's desire and target, which need not have anything to do with the provocation that caused the frenzy. Frenzied vampires do not normally commit diablerie, but you can choose to do so while riding the wave. Next time: Torpor, stakes and Humanity
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Dec 22, 2016 01:56
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Vampire: the Requiem, 2nd Edition Torpor, also known as the sleep of ages, is what happens when a vampire is horribly injured or is too hungry to rise. While in torpor, a vampire appears to be a corpse - hardened, dry skin, hard joints, ashen and dusty flesh. During torpor, a vampire experiences strange, often nonsensical dreams that keep their mind active as they sleep. Usually, this means they're well-prepared to adapt to a new world when they awaken, but it can also go poorly, altering the vampi're personality or memories. A vampire enters torpor if they get full up on lethal damage and can't heal it immediately, or if they're in daysleep but have no blood to rise with. A vampire can also enter torpor voluntarily to lower their Blood Potency over time. In the first day of torpor, a vampire will spend as mich Vitae as required to heal any wounds they have, as long as they have Vitae to spend. If, after doing that, they still have lethal wounds in any of their final three Health boxes, their Humanity is considered one lower for purposes of length of slumber. As mentioned before, every 25 years spent in torpor reduces Blood Potency by 1. The higher your Humanity, the shorter your Torpor is, at minimum. For Humanity 9-10, base torpor duration is a day, while Humanity 1 is 50 years and Humanity 0 is 100. You take the base duration and multiply by your Blood Potency. You can wake up after that period, usually. Sometimes it's up to 25% shorter or longer. Further, any vampire with two or more dots of Blood Potency than you can feed you one Vitae to immediately wake you - though that carries with it all the risks of drinking another's Vitae. Vampires whose hearts are penetrated by a wooden stake immediately enter torpor. However, stake-induced torpor ends the moment the stake is removed and cannot be ended while it's still in. Targeting the heart is a pretty difficult called shot, and must deal at least 5 damage to penetrate. Now, Humanity. Where mortals use Integrity, vampires have Humanity, which represents their ability to understand and deal with other human beings. It can be anywhere from 0 to 10, with PC starting at 7. The lower your Humanity score sinks, the clearer it is to everyone around you that you are a monster, more focused on survival than anything else. Often, this comes off as detached, aloof behavior. Low Humanity also penalizes attempts to relate to humans - not manipulating them for food or scaring them, but trying to read their emotional cues, say. These penalties do apply to Touchstones. At Humanity 9-10, vampires are experts at human behavior and come off as idealized, iconic people. They even get a small bonus to relating to humans. Humanity 7-8 is where your average vampire starts. They can blend easily and remember the feelings of mortality with clarity. At Humanity 5-6, you're the average young vampire that's been around for a bit. You're beginning to accept your condition as part of just existing and know you'll never be a mortal again. Often, you have a subtly ashen cast to your skin and take a minor penalty to human relations. At Humanity 4, you've seen terrible things and have probably killed and will probably kill again. You're okay with that. These vampires tend to be calculating and avoid situations that might endanger them somehow, and take a penatly to relating to humans. At humanity 3, you're a callous, cynical creature that will do just about anything to survive. This is where most vampire elders sit. Killing witnesses or otherwise taking the safe but monstrous route is second nature. Humans are naturally uncomfortable around these creatures and they take a penalty to relating to humans that is quite large. At Humanity 2, that penalty gets even bigger. These vampires are barely human, resembling walking corpses far more unless they're actively acting the part. They tend to be short-tempered, selfish and viciously brutal. Mortals are seen, at best, as resources. Humanity 1 vampires are almost animal in their stoicism. They rarely speak or act without a clear reason to do so - everything is a tool to hunt. They can fake humanity but usually don't bother and instead tend to just look like corpses. Crowds naturally part for them out of fear, and their attempts to relate to humans only get a chance die. At Humanity 0, personhood is gone. The Beast is all that's left. You have become draugr, unable to interact with society in any way. Draugr will do anything to survive, even break the Traditions, without a second thought. They are forever lost, feral hunters that can no longer remember what it was to be a person. In most cities, draugr are put down as soon as possible. Some, however, can be quite careful, even cunning predators, or retain ritualistic behavior from their old lives - they might still live in the library they once maintained, though they can no longer read. Breaking points for vampires tend to revolve either around having no significant social interaction with human beings for extended periods of time, suffering losses or reminders of your vampiric state, harming others or killing them, or surviving things that would undoubtedly kill a human. The lower your Humanity is, the worse it has to be - but the worse a breaking point is, the harder it is to resist, because the dicepool isn't decided by your stats - it's just a number of dice determined by the breaking point's severity. One way that a vampire can resist Humanity detchment in the future is to take banes. When a vampire loses a dot of Humanity, they can take a Beat to gain a bane. That particular trigger can never be a breaking point for them again...but they get -1 to all further detachment rolls. You can only ever have three banes, and once you have one, it's never going away. Banes are supernatural weaknesses possesed by your vampire, most of which are folkloric in some sense. The player chooses them, but the vampire does not. Some examples follow. Bells: You can't stand the sound of bells, and suffer intense pain. Recordings don't bother you - just actual bells. For each minute you are exposed, you roll (10-Humanity) dice and take (successes)B, and must check for frenzy. Blood of the Unwilling: You gain no sustenance from the blood of the unwilling or unknowing. When you feed on them, you get nothing out of the first (10-Humanity) Vitae you take. Crossroads: You are confused when you knowingly pass through a crossroads, and for the rest of the scene, your dicepools are capped by your Humanity. Face of Hunger: When you are hungry, your skin tightens on your face and your eyes glow red. Hungry is whenver you have less than 5 Vitae, and it causes your Humanity to cap all social actions and all rolls to resist hunger-based frenzy. Grave Soul: If you do not sleep with at least a handful of dirt from the region in which you died, all your pools are capped by Humanity for the next night. Hatred of Beasts: Animals hate you and will make this clear when you approach. Further, any attempts to deal with them by Animal Ken or Animalism take a penalty equal to (10-Humanity). Holy Day: On one day of the week, you cannot resist the daysleep nor awaken during that day unless you take at least (10-Humanity) damage. Invitation: If you enter a private dwelling uninvited, you take (10-Humanity)B and can't heal it until you leave. Open Wounds: Your wounds remain open until you enter daysleep. You can still heal them, but they will remain visible and apparent that night. Plague of Purity: Any touch from a human of Integrity 8 or more causes you (10-Humanity)B. Rat King/Rat Queen: You are always surrounded by rats, cockroaches or other vermin. This disgusts mortals, causing you to automatically fail any Social roll not based on Intimidation. You can send the vermin away for (Humanity) minutes with a Willpower point. Repulsion: You have a weakness to a specific substance likely to be found in many homes, such as garlic, salt, roses or silver. You cannot get within (10-Humanity) feet of that substance without spending Willpower, and if it enters a wound, you take (10-Humanity)B. Next time: Neat merits, and Disciplines.
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Dec 22, 2016 22:13
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When previews of Requiem 2e were coming out, and they mentioned that younger vamps would be more resistant to sunlight, that sounded cool. I was disappointed that it meant "you can stay out in the sun for an hour, at most, and you'll still take a lot of damage." I like the idea of new vampires being able to still tolerate the sun for a full cycle (though it's still not pleasant). It gives young vamps a little more leeway in interacting with the mortal world, and creates another level of conflict between neonates and elders.
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Dec 22, 2016 23:05
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1L per 10 minutes is actually not too bad - a vampire won't often spend more than ten minutes at a time in the sun, and 1L is 1 Vitae to heal. I mean, you'll be thirsty afterwards, but your real problem is the frenzy checks.
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Dec 22, 2016 23:56
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Since I've never played this game (or any White Wolf game), I wonder if it would be imbalanced for vampires to use what I call the Dracula approach: "okay, you can go out in sunlight without getting hurt, but you lose basically all your superhuman abilities while doing so".
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Dec 23, 2016 02:41
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With Internet banking and other services, I don't see the daylight thing as a huge problem, assuming you live in a city with a good nightlife and no stupid 1:30am lockout laws (which I suspect were put in place to deter vampires, even though they could just feed on the walking corpses in the pokie rooms). There's tons of hospitality and other late night jobs, too. That was always part of the attraction of vampires- they got to live the 20something party life for ETERNITY! Any rules for places with harsher sunlight? Would vampires suffer a penalty in the ozone holed UV Hell that is an Australian summer, but be more okay in Alaska? Is that 'must count or pick up any spilled items' thing from the X-Files a Bane? I love that.
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Dec 23, 2016 03:03
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The counting thing is a common vampire myth. It can be one of the random weaknesses they can have in Warhams, too.
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Dec 23, 2016 03:05
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yeah, I was surprised to learn that as an adult - and it makes Seasame Street's Count make so much sense it's a multi-layer joke.
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Dec 23, 2016 03:10
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"One, two, three impudent adventurers trying to stop my plans, AH-AH-AH!" (Once I finish the Core Book I'm totally doing Night's Dark Masters next)
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Dec 23, 2016 03:12
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Count Chocula posted:With Internet banking and other services, I don't see the daylight thing as a huge problem, assuming you live in a city with a good nightlife and no stupid 1:30am lockout laws (which I suspect were put in place to deter vampires, even though they could just feed on the walking corpses in the pokie rooms). There's tons of hospitality and other late night jobs, too. That was always part of the attraction of vampires- they got to live the 20something party life for ETERNITY! The thing is there's a difference between "you don't need to be awake during the day for many things" and "you can never do things during the day." It's like when the Supersize Me guy tried to live on minimum wage for a month and then quit a few days early when his family got sick and he wouldn't be able to get quality care on the insurance he could afford. Vampires can't do that. I'm guessing a lot of vamps have a really good time for a few months before they start realizing the depth of their predicament.
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Dec 23, 2016 03:16
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Not to mention the party scene will get old fast, there's a reason why a lot of people quit clubbing regularly after 25. Don't forget, if you're not living near the Equator - your hours of operation is going to vary a lot, even without living in the land of the midnight sun your summer nights are going to be quite short.
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Dec 23, 2016 03:33
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Kellsterik posted:The thing is there's a difference between "you don't need to be awake during the day for many things" and "you can never do things during the day." It's like when the Supersize Me guy tried to live on minimum wage for a month and then quit a few days early when his family got sick and he wouldn't be able to get quality care on the insurance he could afford. Vampires can't do that. I'm guessing a lot of vamps have a really good time for a few months before they start realizing the depth of their predicament. Vampire always struck me as the game of tracking the exact moment you go from gently caress YEAH SUPERHUMAN POWERS AND ETERNITY to I HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE.
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Dec 23, 2016 03:38
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Yup, you cannot be a vampire and still be the same person you were or even live the same life. You have to adjust your lifestyle to accommodate the new food and rest requirements and slowly but surely struggle with losing your humanity and compromising your old ideals because of your new life and powers. The only possible way you could remain "yourself" (read: not destroying your personality and memories by confusing them with half-remembered dreams and nightmares) is to keep taking micro-Torpors to keep your blood potency down and keep your feeding requirements minimal and doing that keeps you low on the totem pole around other inhuman players looking out for themselves. Humanity and society is not your enemy and is comparatively easy to overcome. Your fellow vampires are your enemy. Your own body is your enemy. The slow weight of time is the enemy. You cannot and will not live forever and the last thing you'll be worrying about is night time banking access.
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Dec 23, 2016 03:55
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Vampire: the Requiem, 2nd Edition Some neat merits that vampires can take include a one dot merit to get even better supersenses, including vision in total darkness and perfect identification of any prior experienced stimulus, merits to boost specific types of predatory aura at the cost of the other two, covenant-specific merits that enhance other merits, such as Invictus being able to take Retainers who come with free Contacts, Resources or Safe Place, or the Lance being able to get free Herd or Retainers out of Library. Herd is one of the easier ways to get blood - each week, you get twice your Herd dots in free Vitae, basically. The Invictus have access to a unique set of Merits, the Invictus Oaths. They are the Invictus method of establishing and maintaining hierarchy. They mustb e officiated by an official Invictus Notary. (Being one is a two-dot merit which prevents other Invictus from using their Invictus Status against you as well as giving you a free dot of Allies, Contacts, Herd, Mentor or Resources.) Notaries can preside over any Oath so long as the participants meet the Merit prereqs, and it is expected (sometimes even required) for most Invictus to have at least one active Oath. Almost all Oaths have two participants - the liege and the vassal. The vassal takes the merit, the liege doesn't. The participants must define terms in addition to the Oath's mechanical effects - typically, a time limit, such as a year and a day, conditions of what violates the oath (and thus ends its effects) and so on. Most of the time, the vassal need not be Invictus, and many aren't. Even ghouls or mortals can enter Oaths, but most Notaries will refuse to preside over that. Oaths are temporary, with the merit dots reverting to XP when the Oath ends. Oaths with non-Invictus lieges are a death sentence for any Notary that administers them knowingly, as are unwilling Oaths. Example Oaths: Oath of Action (4 dots): The vassal swears to do a service for the liege, which must be difficult and have definite criteria for success or failure. Both parties agree on one of the liege's Disciplines. The vassal gains access to the Discipline, and the liege gets +1 Blood Potency. This can, incidentally, grant temporary access to bloodline Disciplines. If the vassal succeeds, the Oath ends and the liege takes (Discipline dots granted)A. If the vassal fails or a month passes, the vassal takes the damage instead. The liege does not, side not, lose access to the Discipline. Oath of Fealty (1 dot): The vassal may draw up to (Invictus Status) Vitae from the liege per week, with no risk of addiction or blood bond, at any distance. The liege always knows if the vassal is lying to them, in voice or writing. Oath of Penance (3 dots): The liege gains every tenth Vitae the vassal drinks instead, over any distance, without risk of blood bond or addiction, and it counts as Kindred Vitae for feeding purposes. While the Oath is active, the vassal is immune to the liege's Disciplines. However, the vassal loses all benefits of any other Oath while retaining any drawbacks. Carthians, on the other hand, have access to Carthian Law merits. The Carthian Law grants Carthians advantages when operating with the recognized law of the city. In most cases, the Carthians didn't write the law - but that doesn't mean they can't use it. This gives Kindred laws a metaphysical weight htat makes them hard to break, and it makes Carthians valuable even in non-Carthian cities. Example Carthian Laws: Lex Terrae (2 dots, requires Carthian Status 2 and Feeding Ground 1): Any Kindred that you do not specifically allow to feed in your territory has any poached blood tainted. When they next sleep, the blood dissolves and they lose all poached Vitae, taking 1B per Vitae lost. Further, their lips and motuh stain with black streaks for one wek. This requires, however, that you publically announce and clearly define your territory. Mandate From the Masses (5 dots, requires Carthian Status 5): You may call on the will of the people to weaken an enemy. You must clearly and directly admonish the enemy and temporarily give up a dot of Willpower. You then gather support of other Carthians with a vote, both NPCs and PCs. If the vote favors your admonishment, add the total of supporting Carthian Status dots (including your five) up. For every full five dots, reduce the victim's Blood Potency by 1. If they drop to 0 dots, they become a revenant for all purposes. The dot of Willpower you gave up and the victim's Blood Potency return only if the victim flees the city or dies. If you die, they regain their Blood Potency. You can only level this against one victim at a time. Strength of Resolution (1 dot, requires Carthian Status 1): Add your Carthian Status to any dicepool to contest a Discipline or other supernatural power that would cause you to violate acknowledged city law. Plausible Deniability (4 dots, requires Carthian Status 3): Any attempt to use a Discipline or other supernatural power to prove your guilt in a breach of city law or tradition automatically fails, and you cannot be forced to confess by any means. Any attempt to force your honest by mundane means takes a peanlty of your Carthian Status dots. Your aura does not stain from diablerie. However, you cannot use City Status or Carthian Status in any Social rolls against anyone that knows for certain your guilt and opposes you. Now, Disciplines. These are your weird magic powers. They come from the blood, and tap into both your mind and the Beast. Some of them are a part of your nature, though they may require you to spend Vitae or Willpower. Others require you to make a roll to activate them. When you fail a Discipline roll, it doesn't mean nothing happens - the Beast still does something. The lights might flicker, your flesh might write, your victim might see a sudden screaming face behind your eyes for a moment. It's not enough to freak anyone out mechanically, it's just a reminder that the Beast is within you and you don't fully understand or control it. Disciplines can spontaneously manifest due to connection to the Blood, but generally this is only in-clan Disciplines that do so. To learn another clan's unique Discipline, yu need a vampire to teach you - and give you a point of their Vitae, with all the consequences. The first Discipline we're going to look at is Animalism. The Beast is not just your predatory nature - it is the apex predator. You can let it loose a bit to overpower lesser beasts, forcing your will on them. Most Animalism powers affect predators and scavengers, so in a city you're going to likely be using feral cats and dogs, pigeons, crows, foxes and many, many rats. In rural areas, you can get bats, wolves, mountain lions, bears...the key is that they eat other flesh. Animalism 1: Feral Whispers. You can speak to animals and force them to respond to you asb est they can. With a bit of focus, you can force them to obey. You can get them to tell you what they've sen over the past night, albeit through the lens of their own perception, or you can give them a simple command, which generally lasts for only a night because animals have lovely memories. Animalism 2: Raise the Familiar. While animals cannot be Embraced, lacking the necessary humanity, you can halfway do so with this power. You feed a drained animal some of your Vitae and it returns as an undead creature with retractable fangs like yours. However, it cannopt ingest Vitae itself. It will retain signs of any injuries it had when it died, but they are only cosmetic - tire tracks across it, not crushed bones, for roadkill. These zombie beasts do not hunt for food and aren't afraid of loud noises. They sleep by day and act by night, and will live for a while based on their Stamina and your Blood Potency. You can keep feeding them Vitae to keep them going past that. The creature is bright enough to obey complex orders and interpret the spirit of your commands. It takes damage like a vampire and doesn't decompose, and you may use Feral Whispers on it at any time, from any distance, telepathically. Animalism 3: Summon the Hunt. You can spill Vitae on the ground, an object or even a person to call out to the beasts. They will attempt to destroy whatever you got your blood on, stopping only once they succeed or the sun rises. You can choose to call only a specific kind of creature, such as birds or rats. Prey animals avoid the affected area, and you can imprint a command on the beasts as if you used Feral Whispers - except it can last multiple nights. Animalism 4: Feral Infection. The scent of your blood can inspire rage in animals and even humans and other monsters. Any animal that can smell the blood you spill lashes out at the nearest victim in a feral, unthinking rage. It will eat them once it takes them down. You can direct the animals towards a specific goal or target, though you can't give direct commands or instructions - just who to target or what direction to go. Humans and supernatural creatures that can smell the blood must resist you to avoid going under your command. Vampires and werewolves frenzy, but you dictate their actions. Humans and other supernatural beings enter an atavistic state of attack. If you don't command them, your victims will fight each other, though a supernatural creature can spend Willpower to ignore your orders. Invitation: If you enter a private dwelling uninvited, you take (10-Humanity)B and can't heal it until you leave. Animalism 5: Lord of the Land. You can encircle an area in your Vitae to claim it, walking its entire border. Once you do, animals will not enter it and will fight to escape it if forced in unless they are controlled by your powers. Humans and supernatural creatures have to make a roll to enter or stay in the area, and still suffer a penalty to act in it. Vampires also have to check for frenzy. Your explicit guests do not suffer these penalties, nor do ghouled animals. While in your territory, you can sense when anyone crosses into it and the Blood Potency if they are a vampire. You know where they are unless supernatural powers hide them, and anyone frenzying in the area cannot attack you or spend Willpower to resist your commands via Feral Infection. Any commands you give via Feral Whispers last indefinitely as long as the animal is in your territory. You can also share the senses of any animals you raised via Raise the Familiar while they're in your territory, and you may use them to deliver commands via Feral Whispers. Next time: Auspex, Celerity, Dominate
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Dec 23, 2016 04:24
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Night10194 posted:Vampire always struck me as the game of tracking the exact moment you go from gently caress YEAH SUPERHUMAN POWERS AND ETERNITY to I HAVE MADE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE. I just always felt like harping too hard on that would make the players feel like they made a terrible mistake in choosing to play Vampire, because suddenly the GM is reminding them of how much they can't/shouldn't do. So I always went more for the "superheroes who hang out in rave clubs a lot at night"-approach rather than the "oh woe, I cannot beheld another glorious sunrise ever again!"-approach. But then again, I'm terminally unable to run a game without a healthy dose of humour involved.
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Dec 23, 2016 08:21
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I will say there's a reason V:TM (and the oWoD in general) is still relatively well regarded and still played despite the nWoD being far, far more thematically coherent. And a lot of it does come down to being able to fold, spindle, and mutilate the oWoD themes for specific playstyles and campaigns without too much hassle, even if that meant the games were looser overall. (The rest comes down to inertia and people who bought RPGs in the 90s to follow metaplot rather than game, but hey.)
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Dec 23, 2016 08:42
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PurpleXVI posted:I just always felt like harping too hard on that would make the players feel like they made a terrible mistake in choosing to play Vampire, because suddenly the GM is reminding them of how much they can't/shouldn't do. So I always went more for the "superheroes who hang out in rave clubs a lot at night"-approach rather than the "oh woe, I cannot beheld another glorious sunrise ever again!"-approach. But then again, I'm terminally unable to run a game without a healthy dose of humour involved. In my Hunter game, I took the approach that among vampires the general sentiment is "Feels like a good idea for the first century or so." Becoming a vampire doesn't change all aspects of human psychology, and I posited that around the time normal people start dying of old age, vampires' minds start to break down because the human mind simply isn't built or prepared for such an existence. The older the vampire, the crazier and more alien they are because their original human mind continues to deteriorate.
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Dec 23, 2016 14:20
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PurpleXVI posted:I just always felt like harping too hard on that would make the players feel like they made a terrible mistake in choosing to play Vampire. I mean this is kind of the feeling I've been getting from the New Vamp review in general. They just feel so static, like they realized how awful VtM had gotten but went too far in the other direction. It's coherent and well made but just looks sort of dull. But then, I like my vampires a bit hammier. Night10194 fucked around with this message at 14:29 on Dec 23, 2016 |
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Dec 23, 2016 14:27
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Salvation Army could gently caress a vampire up.
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Dec 23, 2016 14:35
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Mors Rattus posted:1L per 10 minutes is actually not too bad - a vampire won't often spend more than ten minutes at a time in the sun, and 1L is 1 Vitae to heal. I mean, you'll be thirsty afterwards, but your real problem is the frenzy checks. And it's even more harmless if you're wearing a burka. Cythereal posted:In my Hunter game, I took the approach that among vampires the general sentiment is "Feels like a good idea for the first century or so." Becoming a vampire doesn't change all aspects of human psychology, and I posited that around the time normal people start dying of old age, vampires' minds start to break down because the human mind simply isn't built or prepared for such an existence. The older the vampire, the crazier and more alien they are because their original human mind continues to deteriorate. I'd also think there are only so many centuries you can live before the fact that normal humans are walking bags of food for you starts to make you a bit weird. Doresh fucked around with this message at 16:04 on Dec 23, 2016 |
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Dec 23, 2016 15:58
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Doresh posted:I'd also think there are only so many centuries you can live before the fact that normal humans are walking bags of food for you starts to make you a bit weird. I was going more with the idea that immortality not only isn't all it's cracked up to be, it will gently caress you up something fierce. I played the Threshold, as Valkyrie called the phenomenon, as what happens when an immortal of whatever sort starts to really understand what immortality means - and it usually happens around the time their former peers start dying of old age. That's an extreme moment of psychological stress that breaks a lot of young immortals, be they vampires or other types, and no one comes through it unscathed unless they were already so deranged they never really noticed it.
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Dec 23, 2016 16:36
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Cythereal posted:I was going more with the idea that immortality not only isn't all it's cracked up to be, it will gently caress you up something fierce. I played the Threshold, as Valkyrie called the phenomenon, as what happens when an immortal of whatever sort starts to really understand what immortality means - and it usually happens around the time their former peers start dying of old age. That's an extreme moment of psychological stress that breaks a lot of young immortals, be they vampires or other types, and no one comes through it unscathed unless they were already so deranged they never really noticed it. I recently had a moment of extreme, deep awareness of my mortality, of the inevitability of my death. I could easily see myself accepting vampirism, or something like it, while in the state of mind I was in then. Since that moment I have been aggressively scrubbing that knowledge and awareness from my mind; it did me no good at all to have the distant horizon so firmly fixed in mind.
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Dec 23, 2016 16:41
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Vampire: the Requiem, 2nd Edition Auspex focuses the Beast's instincts on secrets, weakness and the hidden. It reveals information to the user via visions, sometimes direct and sometimes hallucinatory, and it is impossible to tell from the outside when Auspex is in use. This means the Mekhet are often the subjects of vampiric paranoia, since...well, they're the only ones who can normally learn Auspex. Auspex 1: Beast's Hackles. By tapping into the Beast's sense for danger and weakness, you can ask the GM a question related to who is most dangerous to you or who is weakest. The answer always comes through the Beast's imagery. Sample questions include 'who here is most likely to give me what I want?', 'who here is most afraid?', 'who or what here is most likely to hurt me?' or 'who here is closest to frenzy?' but you can come up with your own. Auspex 2: Uncanny Perception. You focus your thoughts on a single victim, sniffing out their secrets through the Beast. You can ask the GM questions about the victim related to their secrets or weaknesses. Sample questions include 'what is this person's mood?', 'what is this person afraid of right now?', 'what is one of this person's psychological vulnerabilities?', 'is this person a diablerist?' or 'is this person a supernatural creature, and if I have seen them before, what type?' but again, you can come up with your own. The answer, as before, is via imagery rather than words. Auspex 3: The Spirit's Touch. You can turn the Beast on an object or place, discovering the secrets around that as easily as a person now. You can ask questions about the place, or those of earlier Auspex levels. Sample questions include 'who last touched or owned this?', 'what is the strongest emotion associated with this object?' or 'what was this object used for at the point of strongest emotion?' but you can come up with your own, too. Your answer is, as usual, in images, rather than words. Auspex 4: Lay Open the Mind. You can focus the Beast to make your thoughts like those of the victim - or vice versa. You can hear the victim's throughts as if they were speaking them aloud and always know their mood and intention, plus some of their current motivation and worries. You may also project thoughts into the victim's head, either as spoken words or mental images. You may also focus to bring full memories out of hte victim's mind, experiencing them as if you were the victim. You may also transmit that memory back to the victim to cause appropriate mentally-based Conditions. Auspex 5: Twilight Perception. You loose your mind from your body, taking on astral form. While in astral form, you have neither physical nor spiritual substance, and only vampires with Auspex can notice you. You can move at incredible speed and may go anywhere within the moon's orbit, unbound by gravity and able to pass through anything. While you travel in astral form, your body lies as a still but non-decaying corpse. You cannot interact with the physical world or use Disciplines, but retain all of your normal senses. If someone kills your body or forces you into torpor, it brings you back to the body. Beyond that, you must return your mind to your body to awaken. Every sunrise you spend away from your body causes you to lose a dot of Blood Potency, dying if you hit 0. These dots return when you re-enter your body, and you must still spend a point of Vitae each night while astral to 'awaken.' Celerity is the power to unleash your Beast to increase your speed and reflexes to vastly superhuman levels. Physical disciplines like Celerity don't have new effects at each dot. Rather, they have two basic effects - one that's always on, and one that must be activated. Celerity adds directly to your Defense and to any active Dodge rolls. Against firearms attacks, while you lose normal Defense, you still use your Celerity dots. However, you must still be aware of attacks and be able to move to use Celerity to dodge them. You may spend Vitae to boost your speed even further, allowing you to temporarily jump to the top of Initiative, interrupt another's action with your own, or vastly increase your movement speed. Dominate is the Ventrue power to demand obedience. It modulates their voices to create absolute authority, and is exceptionally powerful, even at the low levels where its control is weakest. Your victim must meet your gaze to use this, though it works through sunglasses or other 'shields.' You don't have to see their eyes, see, they just have to see yours, and it works through mirrored lenses or tinted windows...but not through video feeds. Dominate 1: Mesmerize. You inflict the Mesmerized condition when someone meets your gaze, forcing them to obey your direct commands for the scene. Your commands cannot currently be more than three or four words, and they must be direct - vague commands don't work. 'Follow me' or 'repeat after me' or 'shoot that guy' are fine. 'Forget' or 'Submit' are not. However, you can gently caress with memory by making a statement about the current scene which the victim will remember as true, as long as it's simple, unambiguous and no more than four words. But hey, you can do a lot in four words. Dominate 2: Iron Edict. You may now issue longer commands to Mesmerized victims - up to three sentences long, and they can include a series of actions. However, it takes a while to give these commands, so it's harder in combat, and anything that relies on the victim's interpretation is still no good. For these longer commands, the victim gains the Dominated condition, making them unable to disobey your command for the most part until they succeed or the sun rises. They begin obeying the moment you stop speaking. And yes, 'follow me nad obey my direct instructions when I give them to you' is a valid command. Dominate 3: Entombed Command. You can now implant a subconscious trigger which will activate a command you place in your victim. You define the triggers and what will happen when they are triggered. These triggers must be specific events or sensory stimuli. You can use this to drop the Mesmerized condition on them when the trigger is met, imprint a command on them via the Dominated condition that begins when the trigger is met, or, with a later step, lock or release a memory each time the trigger is met. Dominate 4: The Lying Mind. This'd be that later step. You may now alter the victim's memories to your desire. You must either feed them Vitae or drip it on their forehead, but can create or erase memories as you like. You must speak to the victim and describe the changes you want to make, and this power grants you no special knowledge of the victim's memories. Crude changes usually only take a minute to implant, but more detailed ones can take much longer. Further, you do not control the victim's thoughts or feelings - just the factual content of their memory. You just have to hope that they react the way you expect. These changes are permanent unless you used Entomed Command to make them come out/recede on a specific trigger. Dominate 5: Possession. Now, you achieve such control that you can take the victim's body over completely, moving your mind into it. You control them for several nights, using their physical stats and physical or combat merits. You may even, in a mortal form, spend Willpower to remain awake by day...and you don't take any damage from sunlight while in a mortal body. You must still spend Vitae each sunset as normal. You cannot use any Disciplines or Blood Sorcery while possessing someone, nor any of their supernatural powers if they have any, but otherwise have total control over them, though attempts to kill them give them a chance to resist. While you are possessing someone, your body remains in a torpor-like state until you return. If you remain away so long that you enter torpor from hunger, you automatically return to your body. Majesty, on the other hand, is the Daeva power to amplify your animal magnetism and force of personality via the Beast's tempting nature. It makes people like you and want to make you happy. This isn't the ability to command them directly, but rather making them want to listen to and help you in exchange for your attention. Majesty 1: Awe. Uou are clearly the most important person around, no matter what you look like or are wearing. You cannot take penalties to Social rolls from your actions or appearance, no matter what, and you are automatically the center of attention. You add your Majesty to all Presence rolls against people around you, though not to any supernatural powers, and anyone trying to notice something else takes a penalty equal to your Majesty. You can make anyone approach you with a single word - not due to magical compulsion, but because you're that drat cool. Vampires may lash out with the predatory aura to become immune to this power. Majesty 2: Confidant. Once you use Awe, all you have to do is briefly talk to someone to apply the Charmed Condition, which makes it very easy to manipulate them and hard for them to tell when you're lying or what you're thinking. Further, they want to help you and won't feel tricked or ripped off while the condition is in place. Majesty 3: Green Eyes. You now have an extreme control over the emotional states of those whom you've placed the Charmed or Enthralled conditions on. You can shift them into violent rage (or even frenzy), make them super depressed, whatever. You can also ask a Charmed victim to do something in such a way that they will feel an obsessive need to do it, no matter what it is, right up to the point where they get really hurt or suffer a breaking point because of it. Enthralled victims asked this way will do anything short of suicide. Majesty 4: Loyalty. You can make someone utterly focused on you once they have the Charmed condition, upgrading it to Enthralled. Enthralled victims must spend Willpower to do anything that goes against your orders, and even if they do, it's a breaking point where failure means they don't disobey. Majesty 5: Idol. Your Awe is enhanced to nearly divine levels. You can use this when establishing Awe or to upgrade it later. Anyone affected must roll Resolve with a penalty of your Majesty dots to do anything that might harm or embarrass you in any way. If you've caused the Charmed condition on anyone nearby, they must make a Resolve roll when you activate this or become Enthralled, and those who you have already Enthralled cannot spend Willpower to act against you. Nightmare is the Nosferatu ability to tap into the Beast's desire to cause terror. Not just fear - fear is rational. The Beast likes terror, raw and insane and brutal. Nightmare 1: Dread Presence. You exude an unsettling aura of fear. You add your Nightmare dots to all Intimidate rolls, and those acting against you can't spend Willpower to boost actions (though they can still use it to boost defenses). Vampires may lash out via the predatory aura to become immune to this. Further, you may reflexively create brief illusions - someone's food looks rotten and gross, someone briefly sees a head on their late, a doorknob appears covered in blood. This can only affect up to two senses and can never be very big. They last only a few seconds but are always unsettling and gross. They cannot, however, cause any harm or significant pain. Nightmare 2: Face of the Beast. You can magnify a victim's fear intensely. If you know what they fear, you can choose to enhance that specifically, but otherwise it's just an unguided, raw terror. No matter what, the victim gains the Frightened condition, making them unable to approach the source of their fear or act against it and making them want to flee its presence. If you had Dread Presence active, you can make yourself the source of the fear. Nightmare 3: The Grand Delusion. You speak to the victim for a second or two and force the Delusional condition on them. They now believe something that is absolutely not true, defined by you, and can only briefly suppress it by spending a Willpower to come up with an explanation for themselves as to why their delusion does not apply to the current situation. You can force them to believ anything you want as long as it would not make them homicidal or self-destructive (so 'your friends hate you,' fine. 'you must attack your friends,' no.) and you can't control how they react to the new belief. This lasts several nights. Nightmare 4: Waking Nightmare. You cause the victim to hallucinate in disturbing and awful ways. This manifests to all of their senses, though generally will not change more than one person, object or feature of a location - inverted colors, a hallucinatory monster, a nightmarish appearance, whatever. You control how the vision reacts while you can see the creation you made, but once it's out of your sight it runs on its own...and will do so even if you die. Even if you didn't make it overtly horrifying, it is still nightmarish for the victim, never pleasant, though the visions can't cause actual direct harm or significant pain. Via Dread Presence, you can cause the hallucination to affect any number of people rather than just one. While they are together, their perceptions of it will remain roughly consistent. Nightmare 5: Mortal Terror. You can twist the world around your victim to make their worst fears appear real. You can't do this unless the victim is already under the Frightened or Delusional conditions, however. The fear you create is so powerful that it deals actual Lethal damage to the victim - and even if they survive the assault of fear, it leaves a permanent mark on them - a nervous twitch, a white streak of hair, whatever. If Dread Presence is also active, they lose dots of Composure as well as take damage, regaining Composure at the same healing rate as Lethal damage. Next time: Obfuscate, Protean, Resilience, Vigor
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Dec 23, 2016 17:21
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:I recently had a moment of extreme, deep awareness of my mortality, of the inevitability of my death. I could easily see myself accepting vampirism, or something like it, while in the state of mind I was in then. Since that moment I have been aggressively scrubbing that knowledge and awareness from my mind; it did me no good at all to have the distant horizon so firmly fixed in mind.  I've been dealing with anxiety disorder for a few months now, and I can totally see massive fear of death leading me to making a terrible mistake.
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Dec 23, 2016 17:55
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MonsieurChoc posted:
And I took the approach in my game that most immortals, vampires included, eventually go through the opposite: the realization that they're not going to die. Everyone they know except those like them will pass away. The entire world they knew is vanishing into the past, never to return. And it's not just one shock like that. It's going to keep happening, forever. It's all going to pass, and you'll still be here in this body you had when you were changed. Valkyrie estimated that as many as two thirds of all vampires who exist long enough to reach the Threshold consciously or unconsciously commit suicide shortly thereafter, most often via a form of suicide by cop (in this case, by elder or hunter or werewolf usually). I emphasized in the game that one of the things that makes elder vampires so scary is that they've either found a way to psychologically deal with immortality or they're so out there that mortality as a concept simply doesn't register with them anymore.
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Dec 23, 2016 18:33
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RiotGearEpsilon posted:I recently had a moment of extreme, deep awareness of my mortality, of the inevitability of my death. I could easily see myself accepting vampirism, or something like it, while in the state of mind I was in then. Since that moment I have been aggressively scrubbing that knowledge and awareness from my mind; it did me no good at all to have the distant horizon so firmly fixed in mind. Man, only count chocula is supposed to post like this in this thread
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Dec 23, 2016 19:51
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Cythereal posted:And I took the approach in my game that most immortals, vampires included, eventually go through the opposite: the realization that they're not going to die. Everyone they know except those like them will pass away. The entire world they knew is vanishing into the past, never to return. And it's not just one shock like that. It's going to keep happening, forever. "All my memes are going to be outdated one day, it's going to be horrible. These fifty thousand gigs of meme images... pointless."
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Dec 23, 2016 20:30
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Which is why they tend to have real low humanity. I liked the bit from oWoD where the elders are basically static beings, who are the same from when they were embraced. iirc there was a good one about an elder needing a neophyte to work as an email scribe.
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Dec 23, 2016 21:03
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Nuns with Guns posted:Man, only count chocula is supposed to post like this in this thread he died
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Dec 23, 2016 22:43
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Mors Rattus posted:Vampire: the Requiem, 2nd Edition My reading of Celerity is that it is an enormous 'eveyone will want this' power despite being one of the simple, physical disciplines. All three of the active effects are huge (Mors glossed over that the 'increase movement speed' is almost teleportation, you move so fast you blink. This gives you Surprise on enemies, denying them their defense). You can even spend more than one Vitae in the action to get multiple effects, provided your Blood Potency is high enough to allow you to do that. An Ancillae vampire, faced with a Hunter brandishing an improvised flamethrower, could spend 2 Vitae to interrupt the hunter's action and use the blink-move to appear behind them an attack, automatically foiling the hunter's attack and getting their hands around the hunter's throat while he's vulnerable. Celerity is really, really good.
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Dec 24, 2016 02:26
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